Eos: let’s get the bankers and the climate modelers talking, but will the bankers be too realistic?

From Eos June 11, 2013, PAGE 215, comes a recommendation that the finance community and climate scientists work together. One wonders though, if people in the results driven financial world will soon realize that the climate models just aren’t performing, and drop such collaborations like yesterday’s bad stock tip.

Collaboration Urged for Climate Science and Finance Communities

Increased coordination and collaboration is needed between the climate science
community and the financial services industry, according to speakers at a 3–4 June
workshop held in Washington, D. C., by the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
The AMS workshop brought together business and financial leaders and climate scientists.
The financial industry needs climate data for a variety of predictions, but there has
been little collaboration between the industry and the climate science community, speakers said.

In a briefing summarizing the conference outcomes, Gary Geernaert, director of the
Department of Energy’s Climate and Environmental Sciences Division, pointed to the variety of climate data needs for different stakeholders. For example, catastrophic event
risk managers may need short- term predictions of extreme weather events, while
reinsurance managers need climate predictions on longer- term time scales. He said that
in some cases, currently available climate change information does not meet the needs
of these stakeholders. In particular, climate models often do not adequately represent the
likelihood of the most extreme events or take into account multistressor events that happen when different weather extremes occur at the same time.

…

Climate modelers and financial decision makers are different in many ways and do not
often interact, explained Tom Bogdan, president of the University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. However, “uncertainty, risk, change—these
are not concepts that are alien to financial decision makers,” he said. Variability in the
Earth system, from extreme events to changes in temperature to air quality issues, brings
uncertainty, risk, and change to the financial landscape, he noted. Building relationships
between financial decision makers and climate scientists is key, Bogdan said,
because “you can’t adapt to climate change by googling climate change.”

lol – calls for cooperation between the fraudsters and the thieves, what could go wrong?

speaking of risk, I wonder how each of those parties is taking into account the chances of the other party sticking a knife into their back the first chance they get, since I put the odds of that happening at a pretty near certainty.

It would be an unholy allience. The finance sektor works very well with their bad predictions anyway, and when it fails too big, they are bailed out. To use climate science would just give them an extra excuse to fail.
By the way it seems that the world bank (i think it was) makes their own dodgy projections.

The bankers don’t care if CAGW is real or not or whether it can be proven. They only care if it can be used to get the government to subsidize projects the bankers can sell. The fees earned on the sale of limited partnerships in windfarms and similar transactions justify banker involvement. They don’t care if the models are right or wrong, only whether they can help create an economic opportunity that can be exploited.

I read this as a reminder to the financial institutions that government bailed them out in 2008 and it is the explicit policy of the US Administration as well as most governments currently in power to reorganize their economies around climate change and green energy. Financial institutions wanting to be a part of the lucrative heads they win, tails taxpayer loses Cronyist public/private partnerships need to play along. Now.

It doesn’t matter to the Statist planners if the climate models reflect reality because that is not their purpose. The purpose is to change reality. And the reality to be changed is the nature of the economy and society and what the dominant beliefs are among future voters. It shows up in National Research Council reports every week. Charitable foundation releases. Chamber of Commerce releases. UN edicts.

I have JP Morgan Chase sponsoring the Global Cities Initiative with this vision and others sponsoring the Global Metropolitan Futures Project in lovely Bellagio, Italy. And all of this remake the world planning is relying on the AGW fallacy as an excuse.

There’s a lot of money to be made in being the preferred bond dealer with so much remaking going on. And that’s apart from the new Social Benefit Bonds being contemplated. Woe be to the intern who notices the model for all those future fees isn’t based in reality.

When the ‘Occupy’ group were camped on the steps of St Paul’s cathedral, they stated two of their targets as bankers and action on climate change. They seemed to be totally oblivious of the fact that it was the bankers who were most likely to profit from ‘action on climate change’ from their margin on emissions trading.

I recommend reading Cityboy by Gerraint Anderson a nice background to another industry wrecking economies for profit; thinly disguising greed (Gore/Hansen), codes of silence, looking down on the rest of the populace (superior green planet saving morality), making things horrendously complex so everyone else is confused and cannot detangle the web of deception when a single line would do, saying failure to do as they say will be like (climate) Armageddon (Hansen), vastly inflated egos (Mann), making up figures/charts as it suits them (Mann, Cook or Lew) or to confund, flagrant breaches of laws (Glieck or anyone butchering the raw data), …err I am seeing the synergy here. Not a meeting of minds, more a meeting of blaggards.

The bankers will talk, alright. They are one of the leading forces behind cap and trade, they will make gazillions, with just a tiny bit of each trade. Same as derivatives — they won’t be looking to see if there is any good there, they will just take their skim.

Are we really back to trusting the financial community, so soon after they crashed the world’s financial systems? If so, shame on us.

One wonders though, if people in the results driven financial world will soon realize that the climate models just aren’t performing, and drop such collaborations like yesterday’s bad stock tip.

Don’t count on it. Wall Street financed far too many flawed, alternative energy projects to think that they can be relied on to question the scientists – despite the fact that incredibly large amounts of money are at stake.

If only there were a financial way to protect yourself against unlikely losses. Some organization which would forecast a risk and gamble that your payment would cover your future uncertain losses. Some type of company which could insure you. They might have been considering such climate effects already.

Anthony, your question, “One wonders though, if people in the results driven financial world will soon realize that the climate models just aren’t performing, and drop such collaborations like yesterday’s bad stock tip” is so far off base I wonder if you understand anything about the world of finance?

Financiers are out to make money, as they should be. Unfortunately, because of government regulation, they’ve learned that manipulating markets politically is a far more certain way to gains than “predicting the future.” Which is exactly what climate scientists have done. Finance guys don’t make money predicting the future. They do it by identifying and quickly exploiting market inefficiencies, which are often created through political influence on how those markets operate.

The very fact that you wonder if there’d be salutary impact tells me you ought to stick to meteorology and climatology where you have some experience and expertise.
REPLY: Oh, please. Results=profits. My blog, I’ll have any opinion I please on any subject. Tough noogies if you don’t agree with it, but you don’t get to tell me what opinions I can or cannot have, unless of course you are writing from communist controlled regime. ;-) – Anthony

There are a lot of similarities. Peter Schiff who predicted the housing crash in 2007 was laughed at, much like climate skeptics. The consensus -of the “financial decision makers”- thought house prices would never go down.

Global warming and C02 issues are simply a method to create a TAX ON LIFE ITSELF . . all life forms on earth are CARBON BASED . . so if C02 is a by product of living then you have the broadest possible tax base . . life, energy, farming, travel, transportation, manufacturing, yes all of human activities and even animal behavior. Read about the history of taxes here . . see the keep trying to get more money which gives government more power over people.

World Bank’s Influence at IPCC, straight from good old Patchy himself.

Extended Interview:
Climate Science Leader Rajendra K. Pachauri : Why, the people will see it. After all, let’s face it, my predecessor [at IPCC, Robert Watson] was working with the World Bank and he was getting a salary from the World Bank while he was essentially working for the IPCC. You could say that he was serving the interest of the World Bank, which a lot of people would criticize.

#1. Dr. Robert T. Watson, who was Chief Scientist and Director, Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development for the World Bank at the same time he was IPCC chair.

…Chairman of the Global Environment Facility’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel from 1991 to 1994, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002 and Board co-chair for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment from 2000 to 2005. He is currently Director of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development and co-chair of the International Scientific Assessment of Stratospheric Ozone. He has been Chair or co-chair of other international scientific assessments, including the IPCC Working Group II, the United Nations Environment Programme/World Meteorological Organization (UNEP/WMO), and the UNEP Global Biodiversity Assessment. Professor of Environmental Sciences; Director of Strategic Development, Tyndall at the University of East Anglia… WIKI

Sen. Dick Durbin, [has been the Senate Majority Whip, the second highest position in the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate, since 2007.] on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis “own” the U.S. Congress — according to one of that institution’s most powerful members — demonstrates just how extreme this institutional corruption is.

The ownership of the federal government by banks and other large corporations is effectuated in literally countless ways, none more effective than the endless and increasingly sleazy overlap between government and corporate officials. Here is just one random item announcing a couple of standard personnel moves:

Former Barney Frank staffer now top Goldman Sachs lobbyist….
….Paese went from Chairman Frank’s office to be the top lobbyist at Goldman, and shortly before that, Goldman dispatched Paese’s predecessor, close Tom Daschle associate Mark Patterson, to be Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, himself a protege of former Goldman CEO Robert Rubin and a virtually wholly owned subsidiary of the banking industry. That’s all part of what Desmond Lachman — American Enterprise Institute fellow, former chief emerging market strategist at Salomon Smith Barney and top IMF official (no socialist he) – recently described as “Goldman Sachs’s seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs.”….

Sen. Evan Bayh’s previously-reported central role on behalf of the bankers in blocking legislation, hated by the banking industry, to allow bankruptcy judges to alter the terms of mortgages so that families can stay in their homes.….

Bankers love carbon credits, it creates a new “market”. The investment banks and trade exchanges were competing to be the carbon trading platform. While the bankers may be climate change agnostic, they’re more than willing to make money on it.

Obviously, brokering transactions (as is typically done by investment bankers) don’t require any predicting since they don’t take any risk. But those that take “directional bets” are most certainly required to predict the future in order to make money. Even if such prediction is the continued existence of market inefficiencies being created by misguided political influence.

They do it by identifying and quickly exploiting market inefficiencies, which are often created through political influence on how those markets operate.

Again, they need to predict the future even if such prediction is the continued existence of market inefficiencies being created by misguided political influence.

A large number of them have been burned by alternative energy investments. So, Anthony is certainly right to at least “wonder” if they will “realize” that they shouldn’t rely on climate models to be the basis of investments.

Its too late – financial organisations already have their own sophisticated weather and climate models.

The reason – oil transport.

Many banks, particularly US banks, operate substantial merchant shipping fleets. The delivery price of oil is based on volume – barrels of oil. But oil exhibits substantial thermal expansion at room temperature – the total volume of oil in the oil container ship varies significantly depending on whether it is a warm day.

So financial organisations which are weather sensitive have invested years of effort into models which work.

Since so much money hinges on good information about the weather, they will have zero tolerance for the slipshod lies of the climate community.

Just what we need to get to the ‘truth’ – economists and climate modellers. Throw in some lawyers so that when any 3 of them get together there will be 7 opinions, projections, scenarios and forecasts, all of which will not become reality.

Perhaps the ensemble mean of their various prognostications will be statistically significant having eliminated natural variation.

Will the bankers fund the climate modellers to produce the results the bankers need to gouge more money from gullible governments so that they can pay the modellers (there’s a closed loop system you can bank on).

There are truly enormous amounts of money to be made from predicting weather/climate 3 months to 30 years in the future. From the price of every commodity to the likelyhood a manufacturer of say barbeques will default on a loan. Amounts of money that make profits from carbon trading look like loose pocket change.

The thing is that if someone can do this, they will try to keep it secret as long as possible.

“… as scientists deal with government budget cuts, collaboration with financial decision makers is one way to make clear the tangible benefits of climate science research,… .”

[quote from above Eos article — THANKS, Leif Svalgaard, for a copy of the whole thing]

The Climatologists’ angle is clear, but, why should any banker with average risk-aversion gamble their or their clients’ money on fantasy science?

The bankers certainly do not need the climatologists, LOL. Oh, I just wonder how the Futures market got along without Bill Nye and the gang all these years (eye roll).

The only way the bankers will help the D’oh!bama Administration-Climatology racket is if there is something in it for them:

1) Regulations favoring their investment, e.g., coercive taxes; or

2) OPM (Other People’s Money, a.k.a., tax revenue — in which case, the bankers will NOT go long… you inevitably do, as Margaret Thatcher was famous for saying, “run out of other people’s money.”)

So, the key, as has been said on WUWT by many others, is to boot those Chicago-thug, neo-Stalinist, louses out of office!

[my apologies to John for posting at all — I responded to your grievance on the June 19 MET data supp. thread, BTW — decided to keep on posting until more WUWT commenters tell me to stop — until then, just scroll on by — Ha! You probably did, so this was silly to write, huh? LOL]

The financial people do not believe the climate models.
The financial people do not necessarily believe that politicians believe the climate models.
The financial people FULLY BELIEVE in anticipating what politician will do next.
If politicians are about to do something using climate models for support,
then financial people will be very interested in those climate models.
Then and only then will the financial people take a position…
There will be SHORT positions as well as LONG positions.

A final discomforting” thought: Financial people can make terabucks by making the right short position using derivatives. All you have to do is be confident that disaster is neigh. When it comes to CAGW Climate Change rules and legislation, economic disaster is a guaranteed future.

“Variability in the Earth system, from extreme events to changes in temperature to air quality issues, brings uncertainty, risk, and change to the financial landscape,” he noted.
Thank you Captain Obvious. The Financial community has been dealing with this variability for a LONG time. Lloyd’s of London was started in 1689.

Excellent post! And if I were back near my regular computer, I would be able to add links and evidence that I have going back to 1990 that confirms what you write about the World Bank’s seminal involvement with UNEP’s Maurice Strong and Baron Edmund de Rothschild’s Gland, Switzerland operations, which the Global Environment Facility grew out of, again, in Gland, Switzerland.

The plan, revealed at a secret meeting after the 4th World Conservation Congress (think that’s the name) in Denver, CO in 1987, was to set aside–steal–35% of the world’s land for conservation purposes in return for paying off Third World deb through a bank they were going to name the World Conservation Bank. Their map showed purloined land for “conservation purposes” from every country except the USA, and every location they chose sat on that country’s greatest resources. At the time, the then undeceased de Rothschild was going to be running the World Conservation Bank with the global investors and conservation types he was talking to in the room. At the end of his talk, Baron de Rothschild said that he would be engaging the World Bank and the WWF. Don’t forget that one of his relatives (Gabriel? Gilbert?) was a co-founder of the WWF. Rothschild also said that David Rockefeller would be running the “sustainable development” part of this massive land grab. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers formed their first financial partnership in the US recently (Google it) just in time to benefit from the most hideous and draconian piece of legislation Americans could ever agree to, should it pass, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. [The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being conducted in secret. It would give transnational corporations the right and ability to alter the laws of any nation in the partnership in complete contravention of the wishes of that country’s people. Senator Elizabeth Warren screamed bloody murder about it last week. It needs to be stopped. That is after Americans find out what it does.]

Wikipedia, for once, gives some accurate history of the Global Environment Facility.

The Global Environment Facility was established in October 1991 as a $1 billion pilot program in the World Bank to assist in the protection of the global environment and to promote environmental sustainable development. The GEF would provide new and additional grants and concessional funding to cover the “incremental” or additional costs associated with transforming a project with national benefits into one with global environmental benefits.

The United Nations Development Programme [Maurice Strong], the United Nations Environment Program [Maurice Strong], and the World Bank were the three initial partners implementing GEF projects.

In 1992, at the Rio Earth Summit, the GEF was restructured and moved out of the World Bank system to become a permanent, separate institution. The decision to make the GEF an independent organization enhanced the involvement of developing countries in the decision-making process and in implementation of the projects. Since 1994, however, the World Bank has served as the Trustee of the GEF Trust Fund and provided administrative services.

Gail,
This link doesn’t work. Since the link you have here appears to be a comment (but I could be wrong), and if you have a copy of this, could you publish that information here, or do you have a better link?
“Watch Out: The World Bank Is Quietly Funding a Massive Corporate Water Grab”

There are Wealth Creators and Wealth Manipulators.Wealth Creators tend towards either Free Market Capitalism, or Corporatism (the ones that had to much Marxist indoctrination as youths). Wealth Manipulators are almost entirely Socialists ( in the inclusive sense, not the misleading restrictive sense promoted by socialist in order to hide their true intentions). Bankers are by definition Wealth Manipulators. They hate the idea of people being able to create wealth that they can’t control. The love the carbon tax. Who do you think came up with the notion of Carbon Exchanges?

The link between Keynesian economic thought (Central Planning to manage the global economy and intervene in business cycles) is directly analogous to AGW. A deep doctrine and statist belief is required with both philosophies.

The banking system is currently dependent on printing (fiat money) currency and expanding total credit to survive. There is no conclusive method to deleverage without a huge negative impact to society. We live in a constant threat of monetary instability and devaluation of money longer term.

It’s a perfectly understandable alliance in the context of those who believe in central planning and global regimes. Defrauding others for the “common good” is an essential common denominator in both applications. AGW is deeply modeled after the global financial orthodoxy and is another threat to individual freedoms. Keynesian economics was the original junk science application built on consensus of “experts”. Most of whom are deeply tied to Utopianistic leftism. The parallels are overwhelming.

“The link between Keynesian economic thought (Central Planning to manage the global economy and intervene in business cycles) is directly analogous to AGW.”

(1) Your definition of “Keynesian economic thought” is completely wrong. It has exactly zero to do with managing the global economy, and everything to do with sovereign governments with a monetarily sovereign currency like the US, Britain, Japan, Australia, and Canada, being able to respond to the business cycles within their nations without being hijacked by bond vigilantes or erroneous ideas of deficit spending. In the US, where the once powerful idea that it was a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, financial capitalism (the capitalism that serves the elite) has overtaken industrial capitalism; hence, the power of the banks and not the financial and social welfare of the people. In fact, the great power of the bank lobbyists in the last three decades has been to convince the less than observant masses that it should be content with a government size that does not serve its needs and convinced them that it should be demonized…just like CO2.

Yes, the (C)AGW has always been a capitalist bandwagon.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Banking (Fractional Reserve and Fiat Debt-based Currency) has ALWAYS been FRAUD. It has nothing to do with capitalism which is investing REAL wealth and sweat to create more wealth and trading for same.

Bankers sucker the Socialists into thinking they are ‘Capitalists’ and the ‘Enemy’ ti divert attention from the fraud. Kick out the bankers and their Fractional Reserve and Fiat Debt-based Currency and every one wins except the Fraudsters aka bankers, financiers, politicians and rent-seeking/political favor-seeking corporations that would collapse under pressure from small and mid sized businesses because of the ineffieceny.

Gail, what on Earth are you talking about? Do you have any coherent alternative to fractional reserve banking? Do you understand that forcing the banks to hold 100% of their reserves means an *end to all loans*!? How do you propose businesses finance expansion? How will government fund infrastructure projects? How will people buy homes if they cannot get mortgages?

And as for fiat currency, what do you propose? A return to the gold standard? Even if the rest of the world went along with it, what do you think that would change?